Some time had passed, for moonlight now glistened on the peaks and the icefield. Malien still held the crystal above her head, pastel rays streaming out between her fingers. It looked as though she had frozen in place. Gelid tears hung on her cheeks but beneath her eyelids her eyes were moving.
Tiaan crouched near the edge of the precipice, afraid to disturb her. The rays slowly thinned and dulled until they could barely be seen, until the light illuminated only Malien’s fingertips and her face, and finally even that went out.
Reaching up, Tiaan touched Malien’s hand. To her surprise it was warm. A great weight left her and Tiaan took the crystal from Malien’s fingers.
Malien turned stiffly, like a statue coming to life. Her eyes opened, shedding crescents of ice. ‘Tiaan,’ she said haltingly, as if so long had passed that she barely recalled how to speak.
‘Come inside.’
‘Go to the warm. I will follow directly. I have a deal to think about.’
Tiaan was reluctant to go, so concerned did she feel for the old woman, but she was freezing. She went creakily down the stairs to Malien’s chambers but could not get warm until she drew a bath of steaming water and slid in to it.
There Malien found her, hours later, fast asleep in the tub. She touched Tiaan on the shoulder. ‘Dinner is ready.’
‘What did you see?’ Tiaan asked after they had finished another magnificent repast, every item of which was strange to her. She was sitting in a comfortable chair, clad in a silky dressing-gown with a glass of something that vaguely resembled coffee, though richer and more aromatic, at her elbow. ‘I’m sorry. That was rude of me.’
‘I did not see what I expected,’ said Malien, ‘and I will not speak of that save to my own kind.’ She took a sip from her glass, made to say something, then went silent.
Tiaan did not prompt her. Aachan meant nothing more to her than visions, through Minis, of volcanoes and ruins. She finished her glass, went to bed and did not dream.
It was not until the following afternoon that Malien came to her. ‘You deserve an explanation, Tiaan. I must –’
‘Aachan is your affair. I don’t want to pry.’
‘Hear me. Aachan involved itself in your affairs and you must know what is going on. I believe Vithis did deal dishonestly with you, or if he did not, other Aachim used or manipulated him. You were right to impugn the honour of the Aachim of Aachan; I was wrong to rebuke you. Someone is playing a deadly game and the consequences could be more dire than anyone imagines.’
Tiaan opened her mouth but Malien held up a hand. ‘There is more, and this concerns you personally. The amplimet has been corrupted by the gate, or by what Vithis did to change the gate. That appears to have roused something in the amplimet that was formerly dormant.’
‘What?’ Tiaan whispered.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps a kind of mineral instinct.’
That was too close to what Tiaan had been thinking. From the very first, there had been something different about it. She had not needed to wake it to draw power, as with a hedron. The amplimet had already been drawing power, by itself. ‘What is it up to?’
‘I can’t say. Its purpose may be benign, malignant or indifferent, but it will try to follow it no matter what.’
‘Should we destroy it?’ Her voice broke. It was perilous for an artisan to destroy any hedron she was intimately linked to. But to destroy an amplimet … She dared not think what that would do to her.
‘No!’ Malien cried. ‘It may be perilous but it is still a treasure. Guard it, protect it, and above all, beware of it, for make no mistake, it is deadly.’
‘To use, or just to have by me?’
‘I don’t know. You must leave as soon as you are able. The amplimet is … incompatible with the node here, and the Well. You’re lucky something drastic hasn’t already happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll be looking into that tonight.’
‘Maybe it made the gate go wrong,’ Tiaan said hopefully.
‘No. The gate corrupted the amplimet.’
More to think about. ‘Where am I to go?’
‘Where best your knowledge, and your skills, might be employed to bring good out of ill.’
‘If I went back to the manufactory it would take a year to get there,’ Tiaan mused, ‘if I got there at all. And if I dared risk their punishment. Going west would take months of equally dangerous travel. By then it would be too late, even if I knew what to do.’
‘You must work out your own path. I can’t advise you. But before you go, there is one thing you can do for me.’
‘Yes?’ said Tiaan, sure she was not going to like it.
‘You’re a skilled artisan,’ said Malien. ‘Perhaps you could pull the crashed constructs apart and make a working one from them.’
SEVEN
It shivered Tiaan from the roots of her hair to her toenails. From the moment she had set eyes on the constructs, she had longed to see how they were powered, controlled and built. It was fate.
‘I’ll begin right away.’ She leapt up. ‘This minute!’
‘I was about to prepare dinner.’
‘What if the lyrinx come back? I don’t dare miss the chance.’ In truth, she longed to feel metal in her hands again. Devices were logical, predictable, reliable. They did not lie or cheat or betray.
Malien smiled, though it had a faraway edge. ‘Dinner will be ready shortly.’
Tiaan hurried down the stairs, her heart pounding. As an artisan, new ways of seeing and doing had always fascinated her. Everything about these constructs must be new, since they had come from another world.
Down on the gate level, she walked around the three machines, frowning. Without understanding how they worked, it was difficult to know where to start. The one that lay on its top looked the worst damaged, and no doubt righting it would cause more. The second had its front smashed in; the third, one side crumpled, and its upper part warped. Tiaan tried to pull the metal back into place but could not budge it. Though just a thin, curved sheet, it had the strength of the plate armour on the side of a clanker.
Climbing the construct with the crushed front, she looked in through the hatch. It was more spacious than it had appeared, though it must have been dreadfully crowded with a dozen passengers inside. Above and behind the hatch, a cramped turret was fitted with a javelard-like weapon, similar to the one that had killed Haani. She turned her back to it.
Inside the hatch was a small ovoid compartment with space for half a dozen people to stand close together. Seats pulled out from the rear wall. At the front was a curved binnacle of coloured glass, the pale green of young lemon leaves. Below that was a bank of finger-shaped levers, several coin-sized wheels and many coloured knobs or buttons. Between the binnacle and the seat, a hexagonal rod came up from the floor, sprouting into a six-sided trumpet with a studded knob on top. The trumpet could be moved back and forth as well as from side to side and up and down. Nothing happened when she tried it. On the floor beside it were five crescent-shaped pedals.
She wiggled the levers and pressed the buttons and pedals, to no effect. Perhaps the mechanism was damaged, or there was a secret way of operating it.
To the left of the trumpet an oval hole gave access to the lower level. Stepping onto the top rung of a metal ladder, Tiaan went down tentatively. A lightglass began to glow. The egg-shaped interior was decorated with inlaid silver and other precious metals in the intricate Aachim way. Handles ran down the wall in front of her. She pulled one and an ingenious bunk unfolded. Another revealed a small cupboard containing mugs, plates and cutlery. A third seemed to be a weapons cabinet, though all it contained was a sword shaped like a cutlass and quarrels for a crossbow. A fourth held tools of unfathomable purpose.